Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ on VOD, an Overstuffed Sequel Coasting on Big Winona Mom Energy

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If Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ( now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) has a single reason to exist, it’s to assert that anyone in their right mind would still want to marry Winona Ryder. Beyond class-A Gen X crushes, though? It’s tougher sledding, because a 36-years-in-the-making sequel – note: we don’t use the word “legacyquel” around here, under penalty of flogging with uncooked pasta – has to overcome so many things in order to be merely acceptable: Is it just a cynical cash-in? Will it be more than just a nostalgia trip? Should they have left well-enough alone, and avoid the risk of tarnishing the memory of the original film? Speaking of, 1988’s Beetlejuice is beloved by many, and helped establish Tim Burton as both an A-list director (his follow-up was something called Batman ) and the King of All Goths. He returns for BJX2 , alongside Ryder, Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara, with newcomer/ Wednesday star Jenna Ortega as some Gen-Z bait. And while the sequel was a hit, clocking $400 million worldwide, the question as to whether it’s a creative return-to-form for Burton hangs in the air like, well, either the scent of those cinnamon almonds at the mall kiosk, or an old stale fart. Now let’s find out which.

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The Gist: I’m “happy” to report that Danny Elfman’s circusy original Beetlejuice musical score remains intact here, and still makes me feel somewhere between heavily agitated and outright insane. The opening shot here is pretty much the same, too. (How’s that old phrase about familiarity go again?) One consistency I can get behind though: Ryder is still adorbs as all heck. Her sullen I-wear-black-on-the-outside-because-black-is-how-I-feel-on-the-inside teen Lydia Deetz is now a middle-aged mother whose jaggedy bangs and monochrome fashion makes her the charismatic host of Ghost House , a TV series in which she’s a “psychic mediator” who communicates with the dead. It’s no gimmick, either. She still sees dead people. But she also still sees grubby snotwad quasi-demon Beetlejuice (Keaton) in visions that are more like acid flashbacks than hallucinations. I assume that’s a side effect you just gotta accept when you almost marry the guy.

As for marriage, one assumes that if one were able to go back in time and tell teen Lydia that she’d eventually be a widow, she probably would be absolutely delighted . Yep, her hubs is kaput, although she’s in a relationship with touchy-feely therapyspeaking doofnozzle Rory (Justin Theroux), who’s also the producer of her TV show. And in a bit of karmic retribution, her daughter Astrid (Ortega) is rebellious and angsty, and the struggle to relate to the kid is very, very real – especially since Astrid is a hardcore skeptic who thinks ghosts ‘n’ shit are phony-baloney. Still kickin’ it obnoxious is Lydia’s egotistical-artist stepmother Delia (O’Hara), whose work has become a series of indulgent self-portraits. Early in the film, Lydia and Delia learn that their father/husband Charles has died, and we see his demise in a stop-motion animated sequence because the actor who played him, Jeffrey Jones, is a real-life sex offender who’s been blackballed for several years now. Charles therefore walks around the afterlife – which is as wacky and byzantine as it was in the first movie – as the bottom half of a corpse, having been chomped by a shark.

At this point, I have yet to address the way too many plots of this movie. Gotta get to it, though. No choice. Beetlejuice has an office in the afterlife bureaucracy, with a bunch of shrunken-headed guys acting as his minions. Beetlejuice’s ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) Frankensteins her dismembered parts back together and stalks him, sucking out the souls of anyone in her way. Rory wants to marry Lydia. Astrid meets a cute guy, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), and they hit it off. Delia hangs around a lot being loud and stupid. A cop in the afterlife, Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), has something to do with all this. Astrid leaps at an opportunity to visit her father in the afterlife, but it’s a trap. Lydia, in order to rescue her daughter, has to make a deal with Beetlejuice to fetch Astrid, which is against the rules since living people shouldn’t visit the afterlife, which gets Wolf involved (I knew he had something to do with all this!). As the guy once famously said, chaos reigns, but in ways that aren’t as fun as chaos reigned in the first movie. So it goes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As far as regurged ’80s franchises go, BJX2 is about on par with the two recent Ghostbusters sequels in their ability to be somewhat enjoyable but ultimately underwhelming. ( Top Gun: Maverick remains the gold standard of the don’t-call-them-legacyquels.)

Performance Worth Watching: Ryder kinda saves this movie single-handedly with her endearing characterization, which smartly marks her progression from angstangstangst to some Big Winona-Mom energy. It makes you want to see her and Ortega in a serious drama or smart comedy – and add in Christina Ricci to create thee wonderful goth girl trifecta.

Memorable Dialogue: Beetlejuice gets summoned: “The juice is loose!”

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: Full disclosure: The original Beetlejuice is certainly enjoyable, with its charmingly loosey-goosey vibes, but I’m less endeared to it than most – as a kid, I never really understood its offbeat sensibility, so it never set a nostalgic hook. Part of its charm is the sweetness of Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin’s on-screen relationship, which put the lunacy of Keaton’s Beetlejuice and the crass dysfunction of the Dietz family in stark contrast. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice lacks that dynamic, and its substitute is a whole lotta stuff. Too much stuff. There’s stuff here and stuff there and stuff everywhere, until the plot feels like a junk shop that just got a fresh delivery of clutter, several pallets of bric-a-brac and a large crate of miscellaneous debris.

So the film moves like it’s distracted and wading through a mess, and it loses sight of its core relationships: the fence-mending that needs to happen between Lydia and Astrid, and the lust-repulsion tug-o-war between Lydia and Beetlejuice (the latter doesn’t rev up until an hour into the movie). The conflicts are watered down with hit-and-miss visual gags and flat dialogue; Bellucci’s character is set up to be a major villain, but amounts to just shy of doodledy-squat; O’Hara is strictly a nostalgia casting; even more tacked-on is the Dafoe subplot, and you know a movie has issues when an entire Dafoe performance feels ripe for the cutting-room waste bin.

Burton at least summons the muse of the first movie’s visual inspiration – BJX2 boasts an essentially cleaner version of the original’s tactile, stitched-together-out-of-what-was-laying-around aesthetic, with seams showing on loony sets and wild costumes. But a bit too much of the sequel is content to reheat familiar jokes without the edginess of the first – the inevitable lip-sync musical sequence, the highlight of the original, is saved for the climax here – and Keaton, who was such a firecracker in 1988, is tamer, and more, well, hinged than he was previously. In 2024, Beetlejuice just doesn’t have as much juice as he used to.

Our Call: Me say day. Me say dayyyyyyyyyy-no. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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